Reintroduce or Replace `workbench.tree.horizontalScrolling` to Support Horizontal Scrolling in Explorer

[gpressutto5]

Many users (myself included) have looked for a way to enable horizontal scrolling in the Explorer view to handle long file names or deeply nested folders.

All existing search results (forums, GitHub issues, Stack Overflow, etc.) point to the workbench.tree.horizontalScrolling setting. However, this setting was deprecated and is no longer recognized by recent VS Code versions. This leads to confusion, as there's no clear alternative to achieve the same behavior.

Why this matters:

• Long file names are frequently truncated.
• Tooltips are not an adequate solution when scanning multiple files quickly.
• Widening the sidebar is not always practical, especially on smaller screens.

Request:

Please consider:

• Reintroducing workbench.tree.horizontalScrolling or
• Providing a new option to allow horizontal scrolling in tree views (like the Explorer).

This would greatly improve usability for developers dealing with long or nested file structures.

[vs-code-engineering[bot]]

This feature request is now a candidate for our backlog. The community has 60 days to upvote the issue. If it receives 20 upvotes we will move it to our backlog. If not, we will close it. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[CasagrandeJulio]

Awesome feature!

[ulisses177]

Always wondered why that wasn't built in. Horizontal scrolling is very important in some languages and several config files.

[vs-code-engineering[bot]]

:slightly_smiling_face: This feature request received a sufficient number of community upvotes and we moved it to our backlog. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!